


A Bittersweet Book

by ShinjiShazaki



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/F, Valentine's Day, bittersweet with a happy ending, blame twitter art for this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:00:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22759660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShinjiShazaki/pseuds/ShinjiShazaki
Summary: On Valentine's Day, professors are expected to bring chocolates to their students.  Edelgard wonders about the chocolate Byleth gives her then, and during the five years her teacher is missing.She wonders, and she writes Byleth letters.
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 8
Kudos: 209





	A Bittersweet Book

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this piece of art from Yuka on twitter](https://twitter.com/rrin_reen/status/1228345676565643264), because I saw it on Valentine's Day and it punched me in the face with feelings and a story thought. Featuring the new piece of information of Byleth loving smiles from the Cindered Shadows DLC!

Edelgard had expected to receive chocolate from the professor on Valentine’s Day, as she expected everyone in the Black Eagle house to receive chocolate from her. She had heard Manuela grumbling in good nature about the professors having to bring chocolate for their students, and knew whatever the professor would give her had no special meaning. Despite it all, she stayed awake the night before writing and rewriting a letter.

The first letter she burned, face as red as the flames in mortification at having dared to write the too-simple words “I like you.” The second she tore to shreds, a strange anger pooling in her gut after using the phrase “I think the two of us make a great team.” The third she hesitated on, wishing to write “I hope you will choose me” but not wanting to add “when I betray everything you know about me.” It, too, she burned, and she sat still for a long while afterward.

Dawn was breaking when she finished her letter and tucked it in an envelope. She hesitated again before firmly sealing the envelope shut with wax, and she found an old novel to tuck the letter into and carry with her. The letter stayed hidden through breakfast and class, though barely with how Edelgard toyed with and tugged on the corner that peeked out from between the pages. She lingered after the lectures ended because the professor asked, focusing on other things while the professor handed out small bags to the others as they left.

“Edelgard?”

She did not jump, but she could not help the way her brows rose when the professor offered a small red bag topped with a carnation. There was a smile on the professor’s face, the same tiny thing Edelgard had grown too terribly fond of, when Edelgard reached for the bag.

“For me, Professor?” Edelgard asked.

“Of course,” the professor replied. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

Edelgard took the bag with one hand, her other hand pressed down hard on the book. For a moment, just a heartbeat, she thought to lift her hand, open the book, offer the letter to the professor as she spoke her name. Then, the professor let out one of her tiny chuckles and Edelgard felt its weight fall on her like the weight of the world.

“I made it for you,” the professor said, tapping the bag. “I hope you like them.”

Edelgard froze, head whirling. She could not remember if Manuela had said professors would buy chocolates or if they would make them. After a few seconds, she managed to say, “Th-thank you.”

The professor _looked_ at her then, eyes so bright and curious. Edelgard looked back, unsure of what had piqued the professor so. An idea came to her, and she left the book where it was to untie the top of the bad.

“Would you like to share them, my teacher?” she asked with a smile.

At the time, Edelgard wasn’t sure why the professor’s eyes _sparkled_ as they did. It could’ve been the afternoon sun coming into the classroom, or perhaps just her own lack of sleep. But the moment passed and the professor’s eyes were the same as always.

“Sure, Edelgard,” the professor said, and she sat down next to Edelgard to start in on the chocolates. Edelgard looked at her eyes again and again, but the sparkle, the glimmer, the flash of bright joy never returned. There was only the professor and her tiny smile, and Edelgard did all she could to commit it to memory as the letter languished, unread.

She left the letter in the book, but she made sure to have Hubert take the book to Enbarr before she turned the world the wrong way round. It left her unable to give the letter to the professor when she, against all logic and hopes and dream, chose her, and she fumbled all her peaceful words in favor of trying to clarify her war.

“Edelgard,” the professor said, taking her hands to stop her short in repeating the reason behind the strike force’s name. “It’s all right. I’m not going anywhere. I made my choice and I’m not going back on it.”

Again, as she had before, the professor _looked_ at her. Her eyes were so bright, so clear, so desperately piercing. On anyone else, her gaze would’ve been unnerving. On the professor, so close and hands so warm and steady, it soothed ever jittery nerve in Edelgard.

“Thank you, Professor,” Edelgard said, smiling.

The professor’s eyes sparkled then, dazzling enough that Edelgard drew and held a breath. Her smile was wider then, far more than when they’d shared chocolates, and Edelgard knew her heart was lost to her forever.

“Byleth,” the professor said.

“What?”

“You can call me Byleth. You’re emperor, after all.”

She almost protested. Swearing to give her the letter when they reached Enbarr again, she said, “Then…Byleth. Though I may still call you ‘Professor.’”

“That’s all right,” Byleth chuckled, and Edelgard sorely wished she had the letter with her.

Only a few days later, as she dug through rubble barely able to breathe, she wished with every part of her heart and body and soul that she’d given Byleth the letter as they’d sat in the classroom so long ago.

————

Chocolate was not a necessity in wartime, and Edelgard went without for her first Valentine’s Day as an emperor at war with the world. She had little time for anything at all that day, swamped with reports of death, victory, and the various tolls taken across Adrestia. Her desk was an ocean of white paper covered in black scrawls, and she took one page of her own to make notes for Hubert to manage separately from everything else.

The sun had long since set before she was done for the day. Hubert brought her something to eat close to midnight, bowing when she dismissed him to be alone. As she ate, not tasting the food, she wondered how Byleth might’ve managed the paperwork, the planning, the plots to assassinate her. She wondered how Byleth might’ve reacted to the letter if she’d had the chance to read it.

The old novel was tucked away on one shelf of her office’s many bookcases, and the letter was still tucked away between its pages. Edelgard did not break the seal to reread the letter, though she could not remember all the words in her exhaustion. She remembered the words she had agonized over the most, and she set the letter on her desk to stare at it.

The idea came unbidden, even unwanted when weariness cut into every inch of her. Despite it, she found a blank piece of paper and picked up her quill once more. She wrote without thinking, without caring what poured out of her. With Byleth’s title, not her name, at the top of the letter, she wrote of her exhaustion, her concerns and misgivings, and most of all her soul-deep longing to see her missing professor.

 _I know you are still alive, my teacher,_ Edelgard wrote, throat tight and eyes aflame for how tired she was. _I will put together a search team the moment we can search Garreg Mach safely. Please do not give up hope. I swear I will find you. I will find you and I will never let this happen again._

On any other night, she would’ve burned the letter. Then, tired enough to shake as she sat there, she signed the letter, sealed it in an envelope, and hid it with its compatriot between the pages of the book. She went straight to bed afterward, forgetting about the letter. Because Hubert straightened up her office and put the book away before she resumed work, she forgot the letter entirely for a full year.

It left her surprised when she took the old novel from the bookcase and found both letters in its pages. The thought to look at the first letter had come during a brief midday break, tea sitting steaming on her desk behind her. She returned to the desk with the book and both letters, considering them in silence for a long while.

The third letter she wrote to Byleth was easier. Her many concerns remained, but the words were not so frantic as they left her. Her weariness was not quite so sharp, though she was still pinned to her chair with it as she let her quill wander.

 _Forgive me, my teacher,_ she wrote. _The war has us moving on all fronts and I have not had the time to search for you as I would like. But I know that you are alive, and I promise I will find you. I hope that when I do, I will be able to give you chocolate for Valentine’s Day as you once gave me._

Like the two before it, Edelgard sealed the letter. Unlike the two before it, she did not immediately hide it away in the book. She looked at Byleth’s name on the envelope, hesitated, and then touched her lips to it in a gentle kiss. The two other letters received kisses of their own before Edelgard hid them away and got back to work.

It became something of a ritual, writing special letters to Byleth every Valentine’s Day. She wrote of victories and setbacks, of how the Black Eagles were managing, and most of all how Edelgard yearned to see her again. When they took a solid hold on Garreg Mach nearly five years later, Edelgard could not help the seed of despair threatening to bud in her chest. She went to the graveyard at the monastery, letter in hand, and found the graves for Byleth’s parents. She had not allowed the Black Eagles to put up a gravestone for Byleth, but the gravity of the earth under her feet was as crushing as she expected.

The Black Eagles had left her alone that day, giving her time and space to be alone as she looked at the graves. The letter she had written for the day burned through her glove; the words she had written were too heated, too desperate, full of longing that five years had forged into a blade pointed at her own heart. She stood there, gripping the letter in one hand hidden under her cape.

Edelgard was not religious by any means, but the notion of an afterlife had stayed with her through all her life’s trials. Every moment she thought of Byleth, she told herself she was alive and believed it with all her heart. Then, facing the mortality Byleth had left behind, she wondered.

 _Would I find you there?_ she thought. _Past death’s embrace and somewhere truly peaceful? If I were to fall in battle tomorrow…would I finally see you again? Would I actually be able to tell you all the things I’ve been writing to you? Or is all of it for nothing? Just a waste of paper and ink?_

Edelgard stood there in the brisk wind, holding the letter tight. For a moment, she set the letter on Jeralt’s gravestone and held it there with her fingertips with every intention of letting go. The wind picked up then, threatening to steal the letter away, and Edelgard snatched it back to hold to her chest. The thought of the letter disappearing, never to be found, put her heart in her throat as her stomach twisted into knots.

“I promise to give you this letter,” Edelgard whispered, “and all the others I’ve written to you while you’ve been gone. So _please_ , my teacher, come back to us soon.”

The wind died down as she left, but she kept a tight hold on the letter on her way to her room in the monastery all the same. She took the old novel from its place on her small desk and opened it. She had hollowed out the pages, leaving only enough to hide the many, many letters she’d written Byleth over the years. She kissed the letter and hid it away before taking a deep breath. When the familiar weight of the world was settled on her shoulders once more, she set the book down and headed out to resume her duties.

————

_“Welcome back, my teacher. I’m so happy that you’re safe.”_

————

Byleth had never seen smiles more radiant than the ones the Black Eagles showed her on her return to the monastery. Though she could have looked at each of their smiles for hours on end, the only smile she truly wanted to see then was Edelgard’s. She followed Edelgard closely, both to listen to her explain the state of the world and to try to catch a glimpse of her smile again.

“Professor,” Edelgard said late in the afternoon, “I don’t suppose you’re tired after taking all of this in?”

“A little,” Byleth admitted. “I didn’t think I’d be tired after sleeping all that time.”

“Could I,” Edelgard said, hesitant and quiet, “interest you in something to read while you rest?”

Byleth could not help but stare at her a moment, the sound of hesitance in Edelgard’s voice still more foreign to her than any other country’s language. Before Edelgard could fidget under her gaze, she said, “I’d like that, Edelgard.”

Relief was writ in Edelgard’s tiny smile, and she was not quite so hesitant on the way to her room. She offered Byleth a book before leading her to her room, and there was a peculiar mix of tranquility and resignation on her face as she left Byleth alone.

Byleth very nearly followed her back out of her room. The way that Edelgard had pressed the book into her hands, gaze steady despite shaking fingers, kept her where she was. She sat on the bed and opened the book, fully expected to find a plain, ordinary book. The letters that spilled out into her lap made her stare, eyes wide and brows raised high. She glanced at the door before taking one of the letters and starting to read.

 _Professor,_ so many of the letters began, and so many of them made her ache for Edelgard and her smile. Every line, every sentence, and every word taught her the weight of five years more than anything anyone had said to her. More than anything, she learned of Edelgard’s loneliness, binding every letter with such tension that Byleth wondered how she could breathe.

 _Byleth,_ one letter began, and she sat up straighter to read it. _Do you remember the chocolates you gave me at the academy for Valentine’s Day? I’ve always wondered if you only made chocolates for me, or if you’d made it for all the Black Eagles. It’s terribly selfish to admit, but I’ve always hoped you made them just for me. I can’t tell you how many times I go back to that afternoon with you, just to have your smile to myself for a few minutes. I miss you terribly, Byleth, and I hope our paths cross again soon._

Byleth stood up. She left her room, knowing and not caring that the sun had set. She went to Edelgard’s room and knocked politely on her door. Several moment passed before the door opened, revealing Edelgard in a robe with her hair down.

“Professor?” she said, voice rough with interrupted sleep.

“I made it just for you,” said Byleth. When Edelgard looked at her blankly, she said, “The chocolate on Valentine’s Day.”

Edelgard boggled at her. She began to blush and said, “You’ve been reading all my letters.”

“I have,” said Byleth. Smiling slightly, she leaned down to touch a kiss to Edelgard’s brow. “Get some rest. We’ll talk in the morning.”

“We’ll talk in the morning,” Edelgard said quietly, a trace of disbelief in her voice. Byleth kissed her brow again to soothe it, and she let Edelgard kiss her cheek before straightening up. She retired to her room, and the next day saw them eating breakfast early to have time just for each other, their small smiles and quiet laughter, and the old novel Byleth brought with her.

**Author's Note:**

> [Find me on twitter](https://twitter.com/shinjishazaki%22) for previews, a curious cat profile, and a ko-fi link to support me further!


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